


Four seasons

by CabiriaMinerva



Category: Dracula (BBC), Dracula (Netflix) - Fandom, Dracula (TV 2020), Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: vivaldi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:20:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22160965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CabiriaMinerva/pseuds/CabiriaMinerva
Summary: Before being the solitary occupant of Petruvio's castle, searching for a way to reproduce, to create someone like him, he had been a ruthless warrior. Afterwards, he had been the creature from another time, walking a very different Earth, entranced with a young woman not afraid of death. In the end, he had been the most human he'd ever been.Because all human life has its seasons. And so did his.
Relationships: Agatha & Zoe Van Helsing, Dracula & Agatha Van Helsing, Dracula & Zoe Van Helsing
Comments: 7
Kudos: 57





	1. Spring

**Author's Note:**

> I am writing this story listening to a specific version of Vivaldi's Four seasons (which also gives the name to the story itself), so I'm dropping the link in case you'd like to hear it as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oYWfJuMGMA&t=1612s 
> 
> All human life has its seasons, and no one’s personal chaos can be permanent: winter, after all does not last forever does it? There is summer, too, and spring, and though sometimes when branches stay dark and the earth cracks with ice, one thinks they will never come, that spring, that summer, but they do, and always. (T. Capote)

_Wallachia, 1458_

He had awaited this moment for years, since his father had been murdered in 1447. Then, he had been too young, too powerless, and even when he had been able to enter Wallachia with Ottoman support, it hadn’t lasted long. He had been forced to flee after a few months. But now, things were different.

Now he was a warrior, and he could feel the power flowing in his veins, pouring from his fingers to his sword, emanating from his skin to everyone who came too close to him. He relished it, this new-found power, the strength that came with it.

Oh, god, the strength… the power… he had been almost overwhelmed by all that when, finally, his cousin’s head had been at his feet, dripping blood on the stone floor of _his_ castle.

Two years had passed since that first conquest, and after that had come the purge of the boyars, which had only added to his hunger for _more_.

More power. More strength.

More.

Which is why he was now there, observing the lifeless bodies being lifted and impaled on wooden stake. His soldiers had been working for hours, but the bodies that were left on the ground were still many. It had been a good battle, the villagers had really tried to defend themselves, as if they really had any chance against him. The corner of his lip curved a little at the thought, while a pale-faced soldier lifted one of the smallest bodies to settle it on the pole. This is what he was born for.

A warrior.

A leader.

A conqueror.

And those bodies were just another proof of it, for him, but especially for those who still thought he could be defeated. How could he? He was Vlad III Dracula. He had done what even his father couldn’t do. Soon, he’d be free from the oppressing presence of the Ottomans, he only needed a few more years, few more battles. But he could wait, he was a patient man, when he wanted to. And he knew that this was only the beginning. Or, at least, this is what it felt like. Like the _true_ beginning of his life, and he was avid of discovering what else was waiting for him.

It wasn’t his ambitions that made him so sure that more was to come (although he was ambitious, and that was obvious to everyone had ever even seen a glimpse of what he’d done in this last few years, or had heard the stories). It was something else, something deeper. He _felt_ it in his blood.

He _felt_ it in the blood of the villagers whose house he had plundered, right before slaying them. It spoke to him. It _sang_ to him, of lives, of promises.

He knew his own soldiers were afraid of him, especially when he would look, entranced, as the blood gushed from arteries, trickling down necks and breasts and bellies. They looked at him with eyes wide open, almost as if expecting him to reach out, to collect the thick, viscous liquid and bring it to his lips, tasting it.

And sometimes, a voice inside his head told him to do exactly so.

_Taste it._

_Savour it._

_Unveil it._

It was some recondite memory of a history lessons he had had when he was just a child, something about folks very different from the Wallachian who ate the heart of their enemies in order to discover their secrets and gain their strength and power.

Maybe sometimes, when he’d kill the Sultan, or someone more relevant than common peasants – what knowledge could he unveil from such people? No, not, it would have to be someone’s carefully chosen… he wondered if other people would taste as he did. Would a fair maiden have the same flavour of an old monarch?

The sound of a man throwing up next to a ravaged body (a girl of thirteen, fourteen at most) brought him back to the present. He looked at him with disappointment, repugnance even. He didn’t like weak men, but he still needed them. He was powerful and strong, yes, but he was still only a human, and he was more than aware that an army was fundamental for his plans to succeed.

Without giving him, nor the girl, a second glance, Vlad turned and walked to his horse, Bendis, who was quietly eating some grass, undisturbed by the carnage that surrounded her. He caressed her long, shiny neck, white as the moon – which was what had earned her her name, Bendis, goddess of the moon and the forest. She was a fierce, noble beast, and had ridden with him into many battles. Many horses would fidget in the moments before an attack, many would try to flee as soon as their rider fell, but she wouldn’t. She somehow didn’t fear the excitement, the danger. Nor did she seem to fear death. In some ways, he had chosen the horse because he had felt an affinity with her.

«Let’s go, _sufletul meu_ , this was but a small skirmish, we need to prepare for something far greater,» he whispered while lifting a foot into the stirrup and mounting on the saddle.


	2. Summer

_Wallachia, 1477_

Death... hadn't been what he'd expected. He had fought so much, murdered and slaughtered so many, that he'd thought by then he should have known death as one knows an intimate friend. Instead, it had come as a surprise.

He had been on the battlefield all day, Bendis II under his strong legs, and then the feeble December sun had given way to the bright moon. And then it had happened. Not out of the blue, no, to say that would be a lie. Somehow, he had known. The weariness in his muscles, the loosening grasp around the hilt of his sword, the cold shiver that had run down his spine at the cold winter wind... although he was still a warlord feared among the land, he had known his ageing body had begun to lose some of its speed, some of his strength. Not much, but enough to be just the right amount of tired, on that cold night, snowflakes twirling around him.

The first blow had been on his shoulder. The pain had almost blinded him and he had almost fallen, but he had tightened his knees on Bendis II's side. The second, had hit him right over his left ear, leaving it ringing. In that moment, when the confusion had started to gain control of his mind, he had _known_.

_This is it. This is the end of Vlad III Dracula. The end of my battle, and of all the ambitions I still had left to fulfil._

Strangely enough, the thought had been less frustrating as he would have imagined – probably because of the blood loss, the fatigue, the pain.

Then another blow, this time at his hip, right between two plates of his armour. It had removed all oxygen from his lungs, and his hands had slipped from the reins, his knees loosening and sliding down the matted fur of his horse. He had hit the ground after what had seemed such a long time to fall...

The others, he had barely felt. At some point he had simply _stopped_ feeling: the cold, wet filth, the pounding in his head, the voice in his mind reminding him of all that he had achieved and lost and then achieved and lost again.

_This is the end._

And until then, death had appeared to be exactly how he had imagined. Before everything had gone black, he had for the first time in his entire life truly feared Hell, knowing that if that was the end, then that was his final destination.

But then he had opened his eyes, just seconds or years after the battle.

Impossible. Incomprehensible.

Yet, he had opened them. And then slowly, painfully, he had risen from the filth and the blood, feeling... _different._

The pain had gone, and so had the weariness. His body felt like made anew: he had moved his fingers, tentatively, rising them to better observe the way his nails had mysteriously grown into... claws? Then, he had made a first step, uncertain, almost like a newborn, except... his movement had felt easy, although somewhat unfamiliar. It was his body, but in the mean time, it was also something new.

_I was wrong..._

Then he had felt a murmur, someone hissing from the pain, and... and... and all had gone black again, until he had woken up not so far from where he had fallen, his mouth latched on a dying soldier's neck, draining him.

… _this is not the end..._

The blood on his tongue had been exhilarating: he could _feel_ the soldier's life in its entirety. All of his memories, all of his days, all of his dreams...

… _it is but the beginning._

Afterwards, his newly discovered hunger far from sated, he had wandered towards his castle, pausing from time to time to feed off another dying soldier.

Strangely enough, he didn't really care about the battle he had lost, nor did the fear he had felt right before dying still linger when he had realized he must have been cursed. On the contrary, when he had finally entered his castle and closed the door to shade himself from the rising morning sun, for he had known sun to be lethal to the cursed ones, he had felt more powerful and alive than ever. He had felt as if what he had waited for his entire life, something _more_ , had finally come.

_This is what I have been waiting for so long. All the possibilities, all the opportunities that mortal men fail to seize... they are finally mine. And to think I only had to leave mortal life behind to become so much more than just the man I was._

Yes, as all curses this one had his negative side, as he had soon discovered – his palate only seemed to accept fresh blood (which he had then started to scrupulously select, just like one would pick a wine), the taste of other food like ash on his tongue, and the sunlight was something he greatly missed. But oh, the strength it had given him. The power. The _knowledge._

Blood was lives, that he had always suspected. But after the first sip, he had known it to be true. From every victim, he would drink not only blood, but everything that had made them who they were. Finally, he had all the knowledge of the world at his fingertips.

What he had not managed to conquer as a mere human, he would conquer in his _undeath._


	3. Autumn

_Transylvania, 1884_

  
  


The immortal life of the cursed had been all that he had imagined, and oh, so much more. He had spent centuries gorging himself with the people of Wallachia, Transylvania, Moldavia... And as he sated his insatiable hunger with blood (and sometimes, with entire bloodlines as well, when they were intriguing enough, the kind of bloodline that produced a few eccentrics in every generation), his knowledge had kept growing.

And so had his strength.

Also the powers had kept popping up for the first century or so: first, the ability to appear out of thin air, then the realisation that he could control the animal of the night. And then many more, which had actually done wonders to his reputation. There was no soul in kilometres who hadn't heard some of the legends of a mysterious man who appeared in courts, in noblemen's houses, during the most lascivious feasts and balls.

Of course, from time to time he had also allowed himself some slaughtering excursions among the peasants. Just to feel. To feel the breeze ruffling his hair, the weight of his sword in his hand, the cold drops of rain on his cheeks. Just to feel, to be reminded of a past long gone. Of his days as a warlord, when things had been easier but absolutely less interesting. And yes, sometimes he would linger on a particular, frail woman with huge green eyes who was simply too beautiful to kill without at least a taste, or a man whose skills had reached his ears and, truly, how could he let such expertise go to waste?

But somehow, among all those flavours and knowledge and the sheer joy of a nice battle to break the monotony, he had started feeling that something was amiss.

Not at first, obviously, for the first centuries had been a blur of discoveries and growing. Looking back, it must have been around the middle of the XVII century. And even then, at first it had only been a feeble feeling, fluttering in his dreams when he slept, barely even a distant murmur in the back of his mind when he would wake up at nightfall.

Then, it had slowly grown into something more noticeable. A feeling taking root in the depth of his non-beating heart, its branches slowly reaching every nerve, every fibre of his body. A bothersome affair, if someone were to ask him.

He had tried to fight it as one would fight a mortal enemy, but that feeling had nothing in common with the men and women and children he had murdered – and somehow, it had everything in common. Because it was a relic of another life, one where he had been just a human, with human things and relations to fill his days. Now that all of that was gone, some of those humans feelings and longings had survived and had come back to haunt him.

First in his dreams, then in his waking hours. When he wandered his castle, wrapped up in the darkness and in its silence. Something had begun to bother him, to call for him. A longing, a desire... yet again, for something more. Now, that he had conquered everything there was to conquer, life and death themselves, something was amiss.

He hadn't really thought that would pose a problem, to be honest, so it had taken him some time to identify that what was nagging him was simple want of... companionship.

Someone to share the centuries with, for he still considered his cursed existence a blessing, but eternity was proving to be a very long time.

Someone, but not just _anyone._

Not a mere human, for humans withered and faded so quickly. And not even a mere undead, whose fate was the same, only slower.

No. that would not do.

For he wanted, desired,  _needed_ someone like him.

When the realisation had hit, he had hidden in his castle, refusing to feed for almost a year, out of frustration. How was it possible that _he_ would have such a weakness? He had transcended such ephemeral, lousy human needs, hadn't he?

But then, when his strength was at its limit, he had decided that he would not be so easily defeated: after all, finding someone like him, someone who could be his worthy companion through eternity, would surely prove to be interesting. A chase. An experiment.

And so he had started looking, both for _someone_ that would be worthy, and also for a _way_. Because his curse was passed to everyone he fed off, like an infection, but none of his brides (as he had started to call his experiments when the romanticism had reached Transylvania, striking a chord in him. All that emphasis on intense emotions, on their aesthetics, on the profound beauty of nature and of all that was ancient.. ah, he had liked the flavour of that German traveller. So much so, that he had then sent for another, to better understand the concept of sublimity) had proved to be like him.

Undead, yes. More often than not, slowly rotting away. Some, he would kill out of frustration. Then he would take a break, disappearing into his castle for some months, without feeding, the wolves and the bats patiently waiting for their master.

And so the years had passed with this new sense of purpose mixed to the acrid taste of disappointment, which had only fuelled further his burning desire.

Until he had finally come to the conclusion that he must be looking in the wrong place. Maybe, the problem were those old countries, with their stale bloodlines. He had spent all of his life, and most of his after-life, between Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, only seldom venturing to Bavaria or Prussia. If his companion were to be found among those people, he would already have found him, or her. Instead, he had spent more than 460 years in those lands, alone.

Maybe it was time for a change. A fresh start, somewhere with a bit more _flavour_ to it.

Somewhere like England, with his noble bloodlines and intellectuals and modernity.

Yes, England would do.


	4. Winter

_London, 2020_

  
  


This... had been unexpected. To say the least.

After all those centuries, he had thought that nothing could truly surprise him any longer. Especially, not a human. Yes, they were interesting creatures, from time to time even extraordinary. But surprising? They stopped being that a long, long time ago.

And yet... this woman has surprised him. Well, more _these women_.

Agatha.

Zoe.

Zoe.

Agatha.

Both.

There was something in them, something that had enthralled him centuries ago and that still managed to have him coming back to them. Over and over again. Not to feed, although Agatha had had such a savoury yet delicate blood. He had made her last and he had enjoyed every single drop of her blood. While Zoe's blood... well, she had cancer, so drinking her blood wouldn't have been an option... until now, of course.

Now that he was proving to her how wrong she was about him, how fearless of death he actually was. Now that his lips were on her delicate neck, taking all of her death and making it his own...

_That_ showed how much they had bewitched him throughout the centuries. For him to willingly give up his existence just to make a point – or was it actually to take her pain away? To make whatever he could to soothe the suffering of the only creature (or was it creatures? It was still difficult to ascertain that with certainty) that could have given him the companionship he had sought for so long? He himself wasn't so sure of the right answer... not that it would have changed anything, anyway. It was too late, for both of them. Lost in the dreams he was conjuring up just for her benefit (or was it for both of them?), sharing those few last moments of their lives... 

Why would he give up everything, one might have asked?

Maybe he really was simply that petty.

Maybe, he  _knew_ that he wouldn't find another soul in all creation that could match his own as hers did. As theirs did. Because that had nothing to do with mere attraction, although yes, if he focussed hard enough on remembering how it was  _before_ , in that other life, he supposed he might have found those delicate cheekbones and narrow waist very alluring. 

No, their connection was on a whole other level. She understood him. She didn't always approve of him, of his choices, of his being, but she  _understood_ him. Understood his thirst for knowledge, his curiosity, his never ending quest to find a deeper sense. Understood the complexity and the simplicity of it all.

And as it had took him centuries just to find her, how could he ever hope to find another kindred spirit? Theirs was a once in a lifetime affinity, and to be honest, he was kind of tired of searching for it.

_So what if drinking her blood meant that he would die?_

After all, he had lived plenty of lives. He had killed, learnt, lost so much that sometimes he almost forgot bits of it. Names. Details. Reasons.

In the end, he had to admit to himself that at some point only the idea of a companion had kept him going. And now that he had found her, just to lose her so quickly... maybe the rest didn't matter any more. The knowledge, the rage, the thirst. Because if he just ignored this and kept moving on, he would forever be conscious of something that he might have had but had lost forever, without hope for replacing it.

_So what if drinking her blood meant that he would die?_

Maybe dying wouldn't be so bad after all. Maybe it would bring him even more than life, the kind of knowledge that escaped all living creatures, all breathing creatures... and all creatures that still belong to this realm even without breath in their lungs or life in their veins. The kind of knowledge that he had sought, half-aware, in all of his experiments, but that was unreachable even for a creature like him.

_So what if drinking her blood meant that he would die?_

And so he drank.


End file.
